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YOUTHFUL 
FRANKLIN 



YOUTHFUL 
FRANKLIISr 

(^^^^y^n address delivered 
at the unveiling of 
a statue to Be^tjamin 
Franklin at the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania^ 
on June 16 ^ 1914 

by ^^ 

JAMES M. BECK, LL.D. 

• \ 

of the Philadelphia and New York bars 



Printed at the Shop of 

Franklin Printing Company 

Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 172J 

Philadelphia, U. S. A. 



E3oZ 
.4 



Copyright, 1914 

Franklin Printing Company 

Philadelphia 



JAN 16 1915 



> FOREWORD 

THE Franklin Printing Company, 
successor to Benjamin Franklin, 
printer and philosopher, being inter- 
ested in anything that pertains to the his- 
tory of our founder, presents an address 
by the Honorable James M. Beck at the 
unveiling of the statue of Benjamin 
Franklin, by Professor R. Tait McKenzie, 
at the University of Pennsylvania, June i6, 
1914. Mr. Beck is acknowledged one of the 
great students of Franklin, and we feel that 
this address is of sufficient merit to warrant 
reproduction in permanent form. We are 
glad to be able to present it to the admirers of 
this great American Printer in a form which 
we believe will be worthy of preservation. 



Ike 

YOUTHFUL 
FRANKLIN 



Mr. Provost and Gentlemen of the University : 

I CONGRATULATE you on a notable achieve- 
ment. You have "builded better than you knev^r." 
By this noble gift the class of 1904 has not only 
attested its loyalty to Alma Mater but has given to 
the future sons of Penn a lasting lesson and a potent in- 
spiration. Who can number the students of the future, 
as yet unborn, who, standing where we now stand, will 
gaze upon this faithful effigy of the youthful Franklin 
and, taking fresh courage, will press more eagerly to the 
mark of their high calling? Here we see the youthful 
Franklin "in his habit as he lived." No higher praise 
can be given the sculptor than that his work is worthy 
of its subject. Does not this Franklin with his staff in 
one hand and his meagre possessions in the other, with 
uplifted eyes, alert, vigorous carriage and smiling, reso- 
lute face, nobly symbolize the youth of America, as they 
end their apprenticeship, and bravely face on the threshold 
of manhood the rude challenge of the world? 

It is true that Franklin was not a college student. 
His only elementary training was the reading of borrowed 
books by the flickering light of a tallow dip. His only 
college was the printing shop; his graduation was flight 
from harsh and intolerable treatment, and his diploma 
may have been an advertisement calling upon the public 
to apprehend a fugitive apprentice. As now portrayed 
in lasting bronze, he typifies not only the unnumbered 
American boys, who have faced an unknown future with 
undaunted resolution and proud elation of spirit, but 
especially that sturdy breed of self-made men, in which 



America has been so productive and of which Franklin 
was the first and greatest example. 

No ship ever brought so rich a cargo to Philadelphia 
as the little sloop from Bordentown which disembarked 
the youthful Franklin on Market Street wharf one hun- 
dred and ninety years ago. Why narrate the story of 
that first entrance into Philadelphia? The world knows 
it almost by heart. With his genius for simple narration 
— worthy of Bunyan or Defoe — Franklin has told us how 
he first trod its streets, when with a huge roll of bread 
under each arm, and his capacious pockets stuffed with 
his surplus wardrobe, he sought work and opportunity. 
Whether it was the genius of the narrator, or the dra- 
matic contrast between this humble beginning and those 
later days when he stood the guest of honor at the Court 
of Versailles, and shared the honors of the Academy 
with Voltaire, I know not, but Franklin's simple account 
of his entry into Philadelphia has so deeply touched the 
imagination of men that it is a household tale throughout 
civilization. Whittington turning back to London at the 
sound of Bow-bells, the Pilgrim leaving the City of 
Destruction and passing onward to the Delectable Moun- 
tains, the shipwrecked Crusoe finding the footprints on 
the sand, are hardly more familiar to men of all nations 
and classes than the runaway apprentice challenging des- 
tiny in Penn's "green country town." 

Probably few, if any, on Market Street wharf that 
peaceful Sunday morning gave more than a passing glance 
to the penniless youth. There was one to greet him, in- 
visible to the mortal eyes but plainly visible to the eye of 
imagination. Franklin himself, albeit the most far-sighted 
of the children of men, only dimly saw that welcoming 
figure. It was the Spirit of the Illimitable Future. 
Vaguely he may have heard her greeting: 

"Welcome, Benjamin Franklin, to the rare Band of 
the Immortals! This day you are making history. You 
shall vindicate the simple faith of your Puritan father, 



who, with the open Bible on his lap, said to you when 
as a child you stood at his knees: 

'Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall 
stand before kings.' 

"You shall far surpass that strange prophecy. As 
the unconscious incarnation of an avenging democracy you 
will, as you stand erect in pompous courts, represent a 
mighty revolt against tyranny, which will cost one king 
the better half of his kingdom and another both crown 
and head. Still another monarch will refuse to meet you, 
saying 'that it was his trade to reign and he would not 
endanger the craft by playing with Franklin's Lightning.' 
A self-educated printer, you will found a great University, 
receive degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews, 
Yale and Harvard while the learned societies of the world 
will crave the honor of j^our fellowship. You will capti- 
vate the imagination and win the admiration of the world 
for all time by a series of scientific experiments so noble 
in conception and far reaching in results as to rank your 
name with Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. A modern 
CEdipus, you will solve the sphinx-like enigma of the skies 
and open to man the infinite vistas of electricity. You will 
take high rank in that smaller circle of the myriad-minded 
men who have been supremely great in many varying 
activities, for when you shall walk the Elysian fields your 
true companions in immortality will be Leonardo da Vinci, 
Michel Angelo, Francis Bacon and Goethe." 

Even we of this later age can appreciate but im- 
perfectly all that the future whispered in the ears of the 
penniless boy. Franklin's fame expands with the majestic 
advance of America and the ever widening boundaries of 
science and thus baffles the imagination. 

I shall not attempt any formal eulogium. Not only 
do the limitations of an out-door speech forbid, but the 
subject defies adequate statement in any speech. Fifteen 
years ago I attempted at the dedication of the Franklin 
statue on the Post Office plaza in this city to summarize 



in a formal oration his stupendous genius and varied 
achievements. After speaking for a full hour I had barely 
scratched the surface of his unequalled career. In diplo- 
macy, a Talleyrand; in invention, an Edison; in philan- 
thropy, a Wilberforce; in science, a Newton; in phil- 
osophy, an Erasmus; in local politics, a Hans Sachs; in 
statecraft, a Richelieu; in humor, a Swift; in style, an 
Addison; in the power of narration, a Defoe; in the 
unequalled sweep of his versatility a Leonardo da Vinci. 
What a man ! Where in history is his equal in the varied 
scope of his talents and achievements? His closest 
analogue seems to be Erasmus. Like the great philoso- 
pher of Rotterdam, Franklin was the first author, scien- 
tist, humorist and philosopher of his time. Like Erasmus, 
his strongest weapon was the printing press, his fa- 
vorite medium, humor. Like Erasmus, he was almost 
alone as the well-poised conservative of a revolutionary 
age. 

SuflSce it to say that "tried by the arduous greatness 
of things done," Franklin thought more, said more, wrote 
more and did more that was of enduring value than any 
man yet born under American skies. 

I fully appreciate that there are some detractors of 
Franklin — especially in this city — who refuse to recog- 
nize the inspiring volume of his life because it contains 
some errata, of which we chiefly know through his own 
open and penitent avowal. His morals were those of his 
age, no better, no worse. Are we to shut our eyes to the 
wholesome sunshine of his influence, because even this 
mighty luminary had its spots? To a few fugitive 
Rabelaisian writings and frankly avowed errors of youth 
we oppose his consistent and life-long struggle for a use- 
ful and noble life. I content myself by citing testimony, 
to which Americans never can be indifferent. When 
the great philosopher was lying on his death-bed, Wash- 
ington thus wrote him: "If to be venerated for benevo- 
lence, if to be admired for talents, if to be esteemed for 



patriotism, if to be beloved for philanthropy can gratify 
the human mind, you must have the present consolation 
to know that you have not lived in vain; and I flatter 
myself that it will not be ranked among the least grateful 
occurrences of your life to be assured that so long as I 
retain my memory you will be recollected with respect, 
veneration and affection by your sincere friend, George 
Washington." 

For this reason this statue represents more truly than 
any other of which I have knowledge, the spirit and his- 
tory of America. It is the effigy of one of the greatest 
and most typical of Americans. As Thomas Carlyle once 
said on beholding a statue of Franklin: "There is the 
true father of all the Yankees." He was the first great 
product of the American commonwealth. His career, 
unequalled in length and usefulness, spanned the mighty 
transition period from the primitive colonial era to this 
wonder-working age of steam and electricity. 

His famous predecessors in American history were 
expatriated Europeans and no more Americans than Clive 
was an Indian because he lived in India. The navigators 
and pathfinders of our colonial period had laid in the 
unbroken wilderness of the New World the firm foun- 
dations of a democratic commonwealth, whose basic prin- 
ciple was to be equality of opportunity, and it was des- 
tined to give birth to a finer breed of men, the true gens 
(Uterna, the Americans. Of this mighty race, Franklin 
was the first fruit. When Washington, an unknown lad 
of sixteen years, v/as surveying the Fairfax estate and 
before Hamilton, Jay, Warren, John Paul Jones, Knox 
and Marshall were even born, Franklin had become fam- 
ous throughout the world by his discovery of the nature 
of lightning. He was a mighty power in the Colonies, 
moulding the character, thoughts and aspirations of the 
pioneers by the lever of his printing press, when the elder 
Adams was leaving Harvard, and Jefferson, Hancock, 
Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee were little chil- 



dren in arms. Long before the fervid oratory of Adams 
and Patrick Henry, Franklin was the recognized leader 
of the colonists. It was as their champion that he stood 
at the bar of the Commons, making the members of that 
body, as Edmund Burke afterwards said, seem like a lot 
of schoolboys, and it was in their cause that he stood erect 
in the Cockpit and met with unmoved countenance the 
malicious vituperation of Wedderburn. When the Colo- 
nies were a discordant congeries of separate and jealous 
governments, he first suggested a concrete plan for an 
organic union at the Council of Albany in 1754 and this 
was the true germ of the Constitution of the United 
States. 

He was the mentor of his countrymen. He pre- 
pared them for their later struggle with the mother coun- 
try by inculcating lessons of thrift and independence. 
The homely and epigrammatic wisdom of "poor Rich- 
ard," which seems to us in these days of luxury and 
opulence so penny wise, was in that day of little wealth 
and small beginnings essential to the well being of 
America. Indeed Father Abraham's advice to a discon- 
tented people could be read with profit even by this gen- 
eration. It is still true that while we are sorely taxed 
by our governments, national and local, we are taxed 
twice as much by our idleness, thrice by our pride and 
fourfold by our follies. 

He was then, as he remains today, intellectually the 
greatest American, and this may be said without any 
depreciation of Washington, whose moral grandeur has 
justly given him the first place in our aflEections and whose 
dramatic struggle on the field of battle appeals most to 
our imagination. In the epic of our independence Nestor 
must give place to Agamemnon, our "king of men." But 
in those larger considerations, which outleap nationality 
and have a universal appeal to all races, classes and creeds, 
Franklin was, and still is, at least intellectually, the great- 
est of Americans. 



10 



Even in the matter of purely patriotic achievement, 
Franklin's invaluable contribution to the cause of inde- 
pendence can be measured by the fact that his name alone 
among all his contemporaries is to be found upon the 
four great documents which made us a free people, viz., 
the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance 
with France, the Treaty of Peace with England, and 
last, but not least, the Constitution of the United States. 

To that great document, which so far has given a 
practical realization of the highest ideals of American 
liberty, and which is probably the greatest state document 
yet penned by man, Franklin's contribution was ines- 
timable. Apart from the compromise measures which he 
proposed, which saved the Convention from disintegrating 
without its glorious result, it v»^as the potent power of 
Franklin's personality, with its shrewd union of political 
sagacity and tactful savoir fair, which so reconciled the 
discordant members of the convention that they finally 
agreed to sign the document for submission to the people. 

This was the last and perhaps the most useful of his 
achievements. Conscious that, like Moses, he could on ac- 
count of age only behold the promised land from afar and 
not enter therein, it was with the prescience of an inspired 
prophet that at the close of the great convention he 
pointed to the half disc upon the speaker's chair and said 
in substance that while he had often wondered in the 
course of the four months' deliberations whether that 
picture of the sun represented it as rising or setting, he 
now knew that it symbolized "a rising sun." Yes, it 
has been hitherto an ascendant sun in the constellation 
of the nations, and let us pray God that the darkening 
clouds of socialism and even anarchy are not in our day 
to obscure this beneficent luminary of civilization. 

Franklin was not only the first and intellectually the 
greatest of Americans, but he was also the most typical. 
Both his virtues and his failings were characteristic of 
the American character as it has since developed. His 



11 



shrewdness, utilitarianism, philosophic good humor, poise 
of judgment, tolerant spirit, democratic temperament, in- 
ventive genius, intellectual inquisitiveness, love of industry 
and pride in achievement are all characteristically Amer- 
ican qualities. 

7^he two Americans who seem to me to come most di- 
rectly from the very heart of America, and best typify 
the average American character, are Franklin and Lincoln. 
Both unite in their personalities the qualities of good 
humor, generous tolerance, philosophic optimism, intellec- 
tual versatility, freedom from conventionality, simplicity 
of ideas, and last, but not least, common sense. Franklin, 
like Lincoln, was the very genius of common sense. The 
great philosopher was possibly more versatile than pro- 
found. Certainly his was a telescopic, not a microscopic, 
vision. He was wonderfully clever and resourceful, but 
not a master of details. He resembled Erasmus rather 
than Darwin, Hans Sachs more than Goethe. 

He accomplished all he did by his freedom from 
intellectual conventionality and his sustained and intelli- 
gent application of common sense to the problems that 
confronted him. That is not only a rarer but a higher 
gift than many suspect. Common sense is the instinctive 
appreciation of the nice relation which things bear to 
each other, without which the most learned man may be, 
like King James, justly characterized as "the wisest fool 
in Christendom." With common sense a man, who like 
Franklin has but a meagre education and whose learning 
has been distributed — in this day of specialization we 
would say dissipated — over an almost infinite field of 
thought may yet accomplish veritable miracles. 

Oh, for a breath of Franklin's sanity and common 
sense in this hysterical generation, when the whole world 
seems topsy turvy, when many classes are in revolt against 
the institutions which make for stability, when women are 
growing masculine in the frenzied and violent advocacy 
of new privileges and men are becoming feminine in sub- 



12 



mitting to intolerable wrongs, when the councils of men 
are darkened with vain imaginings and legislators, admin- 
istrators and, alas! even judges are fleeing in abject cow- 
ardice before the rising dust of an advancing windstorm! 
Franklin had too keen a sense of humor to be swept away 
by this spirit of hysteria and too fine a sense of justice to 
accept the present-day cowardly surrender of principle 
to political expediency. If he had been able, as he humor- 
ously hoped, to float in a state of suspended animation 
in a cask of Madeira for more than a century and then 
revisit the scene of his achievements, what would not be 
to-day his amazement, admiration and, we must add, dis- 
gust? The greatness of the nation, which he had helped 
to bring into existence, would satisfy even his universal 
spirit. The growth of his beloved city would delight him 
beyond power of expression. The expansion of science 
would stagger even his comprehension, but I fear he would 
have only contempt for the petty politicians in city, state 
and nation, who betray the most sacred principles of lib- 
erty, to which he gave the mighty labors of his life, to 
gratify the base passions of the mob. 

He sympathized with people and especially with the 
working classes, of which he himself as a printer was a 
shining example, but his ideal of the worker was to work 
and not to idle. He would have scorned a movement, 
whether by law or otherwise, which would sink the in- 
dustrious and skillful worker to the level of the idle and 
the thriftless, and he would have regarded with equal 
loathing the intellectual demagogues, who play upon the 
passions of the masses, and the sordid grafters, who be- 
tray the great cause of civic improvement to enrich 
themselves. 

He was a man of the people, simple in his tastes, 
companionable to high and low and with scant regard to 
the prejudice of class — a cross indeed between the in- 
tellectual Erasmus and the democratic Hans Sachs. 
When loaded down with honors received from titled and 



13 



royal hands, he could still remember his modest beginning 
and the days of his early married life, when he was 
clothed in homespun of his wife's spinning. When in 
his later years he had ceased for nearly forty years to be 
a printer by occupation and was universally acclaimed 
as among the first, if not the first man of his age, he 
proudly described himself as "Benjamin Franklin, printer, 
of Philadelphia." 

To that city he was as Prospero in the wondrous 
island of Shakespeare's fancy. He was its wonder worker 
and even to this day its noblest institutions are born of 
his thaumaturgic genius. If he could not, like Prospero, 
conjure "Jove's lightnings" and "call forth the mutinous 
winds and twixt the green sea and the azured vault, set 
roaring war," he could at least curb the destructive fury 
of the lightning and solve its baffling mystery. His Ariel 
was his swift intelligence; his working wand, science; 
his magic mantle, imagination. In him was that rarest 
of combinations, a prescient and sweeping imagination 
coupled with the finest common sense and poise of judg- 
ment. 

He was a believer neither in the simple nor the stren- 
uous, but in the sane life. He not only preached philos- 
ophy, he practiced it. Like Horatio, he was one who 

"in suffering all that suffers nothing; 
A man that fortune's buffets and rewards 
Hast ta'en with equal thanks. And blest are they 
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled. 
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 
To sound what stop she please." 

Franklin was also a typical American in his love of 
work — not as a mere means to an end, but for the love 
of work, the joy of achievement. He was the most useful 
and industrious citizen that Philadelphia or America has 
ever known. His period of public service, which reached 



14 



nearly seventy years, was unexampled in length. No bur- 
den seemed to be too great for him, no sacrifice too severe. 
He loved to do things. To him the work-a-day world 
was a glorious arena and he disdained to triumph sine 
pulvere. 

This is, or at least was, the American spirit. Our 
very name implies it. The word "America," or Italian 
"Amerigo," is derived by Humboldt from two Gothic 
words, "Amal," meaning "work," and "Ric," the root of 
"to conquer." All conquering work! This was ever 
Franklin's ideal. Even when he seemed most idle, his 
brain was germinating mighty thoughts. His broad toler- 
ant nature had contempt only for the thoughtless and the 
idle. When like Prospero he laid down his wand and 
mantle, he could look with just complacency upon the 
mighty results of his tireless industry, a great city vivified, 
a nation brought into being, science expanded, and the 
whole human race benefited because he had lived. Well 
may we paraphrase that stone-worker of Westminster 
Abbey and say: 

"O rare Ben Franklin!" 

But this statue of Franklin best typifies the spirit and 
achievements of America because it represents the "youth- 
ful Franklin." In this it is unique. The venerable and 
patriarchal Franklin has so powerfully impressed the im.- 
agination of man that every public effigy of him, of which 
I have any knowledge, represents him in his mature age. 
This, however, is the Franklin in the "May morn of 
youth," the time which on high authority is said to be 
"ripe for exploits and mighty enterprises." To maintain 
a just equilibrium in society, the conservative judgment of 
age is doubtless necessary, but without the radical spirit, 
the indomitable energy and courage of youth, the best of 
history had not been. 

All that Franklin subsequently became was latent in 
him as he stood a boy of seventeen on Market Street 
wharf. It was more than merely latent. By tireless 



15 



industry and unwearying study under adverse conditions, 
he had prepared himself for his future work in the great- 
est of all universities, the University of Gutenberg. In 
this age, when the average boy seems to have lost his love 
of reading, unless we except the ephemeral newspaper or 
current magazine, it is well to be reminded that his won- 
derful career was largely due not only to his self-acquired 
\ wealth of ideas but his self-taught and unequalled power 
of expression. It is most fitting that this Franklin should 
be represented in the "kingly state of youth," especially 
^ as it will stand in the classic shades of this historic uni- 
versity as an incentive to future generations of young 
Americans. 

When I spoke on Franklin fifteen years ago in this 
city, I recalled that he regarded all rhetoric as mere 
"sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" unless it served 
some useful purpose. I then ventured to make several 
suggestions, of which at least one bore immediate fruit. 
With your indulgence I shall again refer to them. 

I first suggested that as Franklin had rendered some 
of his greatest services to America and to civilization in 
the city of Paris that a replica of the Boyle statue should 
be erected in that queenly city on the Seine as a token of 
good will from America to France. The lamented John 
H. Harjes of Paris accepted this suggestion, and it was 
through his generous gift that a replica of Franklin sits 
in patriarchal dignity in an admirable position near the 
Trocadero and within sight of Passy, wherein he passed so 
many useful and happy years. May I now suggest that 
a replica of the McKenzie statue could be fittingly given 
by this famous University, especially at this time when we 
are celebrating the centenary of peace between England 
and America, to the city of London to commemorate the 
fact that in that great metropolis Franklin also worked 
for a time as a journeyman printer and later rendered 
distinguished services as the agent of the Colonies. 

I next suggested that the sacred remains of Franklin 



16 



and his wife, now in a neglected cemetery which must 
some day yield to the needs of modern improvement, 
should be reverently exhumed and given more fitting 
sepulture. Would it not be most in keeping with Frank- 
lin's ideals and character to give his remains a final rest- 
ing-place within this great institution whose proudest 
boast is that it is the University of Franklin? 

Finally, I urged that the truest monument to Frank- 
lin should be Philadelphia itself, and especially the great 
institutions which Franklin founded, of which this Uni- 
versity is beyond question the greatest. He loved this 
city with a consuming love. It was not the place of his 
birth, but it was the city in which most of his conscious 
life was spent, and it was the scene of his greatest achieve- 
ments. He was its most useful citizen. However far 
afield his public duties carried him, he always regarded 
and described himself as "Benjamin Franklin of Phila- 
delphia." He gave both to his native and adopted cities 
trust funds, which he asked each people to accept as "a 
testimony of my earnest desire to be useful to them after 
my departure." He expressed a wish that the accumu- 
lations of his bequest should from century to century be 
used for such public buildings as would "make living in 
the town more convenient to its people and render it 
more agreeable to its strangers." 

If the present generation would only have a revival 
of his spirit of individual initiative and enlightened am- 
bition the possibilities of this city and its great University 
are unlimited. 

In proportion to what Philadelphia might have been, 
it is a city of wasted opportunities. With an inefficient and 
archaic form of government, and at times dominated by 
the most sordid of grafters, it has often reminded me of 
Gulliver bound down to the earth by petty Lilliputians. 
By the Lilliputians I mean the curbstone politicians, who 
too often dominate its councils. I would apologize to 
the people of Lilliput for the comparison, if that city 



17 



had ever existed, for while they were small in stature, 
Swift nowhere indicates that they were dishonest. Our 
professional politicians are the Lilliputians. Philadelphia 
and its noble body of citizenship is the sleeping Gulliver, 
who will one day awake and break the petty bonds which 
check its growth. It might have remained the capital 
of the nation, had not its petty politicians of that day 
sold the birthright of this historic city of America for a 
mess of pottage. This opportunity, which would have 
made it one of the four great capitals of the world, was 
lost forever, as so many other opportunities have since 
been, by the shameful way in which the future of the 
city has at times been sold for personal advantage. 

Time has not ceased to run and many centuries are 
yet before this noble and historic city. Let it but have 
the genuine and lofty purposes of its Franklin, let it but 
imitate his spirit of individual initiative and indomitable 
courage, let it but have his genius for concentration, con- 
solidation and co-operative citizenship, and it will come 
to pass that Philadelphia will gain that high rank among 
the cities of the world to which it is so clearly destined. 

When in the infancy of Philadelphia and shortly 
after Franklin first walked its streets, Thomas Penn 
visited his colony, the leading men of the little city pre- 
sented him a petition in which they asked him so to 
foster education and culture that Philadelphia would be- 
come under his enlightened patronage "the Athens of 
America." 

Thus early did our forebears "hitch their wagon to 
a star." This also was Franklin's ideal for his adopted 
city and while he lived it was indeed "the Athens of 
America." If it has fallen away from that high estate, 
it is because there have been too few Franklins in succeed- 
ing generations and too much of the dry rot of excessive 
family pride. With the development of our municipal 
government we have forgotten the spirit of individual 
initiative and have left the noblest projects for the ad- 



18 



vancement of our city to sordid politicians rather than 
to our true intellectual leaders. 

The time is past when Philadelphia can become the 
commercial metropolis of this country. What of it? 
There is something more in life than traffic or commerce. 
If Florence had only developed the commercial spirit, it 
would not be today a Mecca for all who prefer culture to 
mere money-making. 

Men and brethren, is it too much to hope that 
Philadelphia may again have in full measure the spirit 
of her Franklin ? As a master builder he was a true Flor- 
entine and a worthy yoke-fellow of the great Leonardo 
and Michel Angelo. Let this generation be actuated 
by his civic enterprise and it will then build in the lofty 
spirit of the Commune of Florence six centuries ago, when 
it ordered its illustrious leader, Arnolfo, "to make a design 
for the renovation of Sancta Reparata in a style of mag- 
nificence which neither the industry nor power of man 
can surpass," giving as a reason "that this Commune 
should not engage in any enterprise unless its intention 
be to make the result correspond with that noblest sort of 
heart which is composed of the united will of many citi- 
zens." 

Such was the spirit of Franklin ! Such should be the 
spirit of Philadelphia! 



19 



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